Thursday, November 25, 2010

20 percent of Facebook 'news feed' posts are malware

Security company BitDefender has said today that 20 percent of posts that Facebook users see on their "news feed" are actually malware.

60 percent of those attacks come from third-party apps.

22 percent of the malware apps say they will help you see who has been viewing your profile, 15 percent offer "extras" for games you might have like FarmVille, 11 percent offer a "dislike" button (it doesn't exist) and another 7 percent offer links to games.

BitDefender collected its data through the SafeGo Facebook app, which scans user's accounts for malware. SafeGo was launched last month and has 14,000 users.

So far, the software has scanned 17 million posts.

Websense's security tool Defensio says that 1 in every 10 updates that have a link lead to malware